Paradoxical Punishment as It Relates to the Battered Woman Syndrome

Abstract

Three aspects of punishment are used to describe and conceptualize the behavior of battered women. Both animal-analog and human-subject research provide the basis for three alternative explanations as to why victims remain in abusive relationships: (a) Punishment can operate as a discriminative stimulus for immediate or eventual positive reinforcement; (b) punishment can speed up responding and prolong extinction; and (c) punishment can augment responsiveness by increasing the motivation to obtain positive reinforcement. These three processes are applied to the cyclical patterns of interactions that occur in abusive relationships. The conceptualizations offered herein are intended to augment the existing theories of domestic violence.